FAITH
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Putting your complete trust in someone or something
In 1824 a little boy was born in France. He loved to go to the circus and his favorite part was the tightrope-walkers. He would go home and try to imitate what they did. At age 5 his parents sent him to train at a popular gym. Just six months later he made his first public performance and was nicknamed, “The Boy Wonder”.
When he grew up, he became a famous. He is most known as the first man to walk across Niagara Falls on a tightrope. He crossed it more than 300 times. One time he stopped in the middle and cooked an egg. Another time he carried a camera and took a picture of the crowd. He even carried his manager over on his back. The crowd cheered loudly for this brave and skilled acrobat.
His name was Charles Blondin. The story is told that he once pushed a wheelbarrow full of cement across the raging water. He asked the crowd, “Do you believe that I could push a man across the falls in this wheelbarrow.” Everyone cheered and said, “Yes, yes, we believe that you can do it.” “Then who will be the one?” Blondin asked. Nobody stepped forward. They truly believed that he could do it, but they did not have enough faith to commit to the journey.
Faith is a part of life. We trust in many people, like our parents. We believe that they will provide the food we need to eat and the clothes that we need to wear. We trust our teachers to give us good instruction and to help us learn what is right. We trust firemen and policemen to protect us. We trust doctors to know how to make us feel better when we are sick.
We also trust in many things. When you sit down on a chair you believe that it will hold you. You often cross bridges without giving it a second thought. You have faith that when you turn on a light switch, you’ll get light and when you turn on a faucet, you’ll get water. You believe that you can drink that water without getting sick. We trust many people and things every day.
What would happen if every time you sat on a chair, it broke? Would you still trust chairs? What if every time you turned on the faucet nothing happened, or the water came out brown and dirty? Usually they don’t, but sometimes people and things do fail.
God has NEVER failed, and He never will. He has all power, knowledge, and love. He can fix any problem and He never worries about how things will turn out. The only thing God can’t do is fail.
The Bible is full of accounts where ordinary people learned to trust in God. One day God sent an angel to a young man named Gideon. Gideon’s nation, Israel, had been overrun by an enemy and God was going to use him to kick them out. By himself Gideon had no way of doing that. He would have to trust God and God made that very clear.
Gideon sent word out and gathered an army. 32,000 Jewish men showed up, but the enemy had 135,000 soldiers. If they fought that day, every Jewish man would have to kill 4 of the enemy. God told Gideon that he had TOO MANY men. When God gave them the victory, the men would
think that they were great fighters and would not give God the glory. God said, “Gideon, tell the men that if they are afraid that they can go home.”
The men weren’t blind. They could see that they were really outnumbered, so many of them left. That night when Gideon counted his men, he only had 10,000 left. Now each of them would have to kill 13 (and a half) of the enemy soldiers. That would be really hard to do. God spoke again and said, “Gideon, you still have too many men. Have the men go to the stream. Watch them and separate them by the way that they drink.”
When the men were finished drinking, Gideon had two different groups. One group were men who put their faces right in the water to drink. The other group got down on one knee and cupped the water with their hands. It was this second group that God told Gideon to keep. He sent the other group home. Now he only had 300 men against 135,000. Each Jewish soldier would have to kill 450 of the enemy. Impossible! But not with God.
Each Jewish man was given a trumpet, and a torch inside of a pitcher. At just the right moment that night they smashed the pitchers to reveal the light and they blew their trumpets. The enemy, half asleep, got up in confusion and fought and killed each other. A great victory was won because Gideon put his FAITH in God and what He said.
YOU CAN READ THIS BIBLE STORY IN JUDGES 6 AND 7
The most important faith you can have is SAVING FAITH. Ephesians 2:8,9 says, “For by grace are you saved through FAITH; and that not of yourselves it is a gift of God; Not of works, lest any man should boast.” We need to be saved from our sins. Sin is anything that you think, say or do that displeases God. God cannot allow you into heaven if you don’t get rid of your sin. The ONLY way to do that is by putting your FAITH in Jesus, believing that He died on the cross for your sins and by asking Him to save you. Since HE NEVER FAILS, we can trust Him to give us eternal life. HAVE YOU TRUSTED JESUS TO SAVE YOU?
Curriculum by: Mark Redka (CBM)